Toronto Raptors take long, humbling road to first NBA championship

OAKLAND — The Toronto Raptors were an afterthought for 24 years. And then, they were finally crowned champions.

This was the franchise on the outside looking in. They were named after a 1993 movie about dinosaurs. The inaugural season was played in a cavernous baseball stadium and fans had to be taught how to cheer. The only flashes of success in two decades came on the backs of stars who fled at the first opportunity. ESPN isn’t shown here. It snows a lot. They don’t get Christmas games. Taxes are tricky. The one and only No. 1 pick was spent on Andrea Bargnani. The most famous iconic player in franchise history once traded hands with the head coach. One of their four banners commemorates the 2015 season that ended in a harrowing sweep.

Winning the NBA championship was never a serious consideration. Even though this is their sixth-consecutive playoff run, the gold ball was only a fantasy. It was spoken about, but that was just lip service for a team led by two of the most inefficient scorers in playoff history. There was a glass ceiling in the form of LeBron James, and the Raptors embarrassed themselves year after the year much to the delight of their neighbours to the south. They became a running joke.

That is until Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster landed a true superstar in Kawhi Leonard. He became disgruntled, and it just so happened that San Antonio was more interested in ready-made stars than packages involving picks, and so the Raptors pounced. It cost them DeMar DeRozan and a temporary hit to their reputation, but nobody can argue with the results. Leonard was named Finals MVP after finishing with the third-most points in a single playoff run behind only James and Michael Jordan. (Yes, the Raptors now employ someone that belongs in the same sentence as LeBron and MJ, and odds are he’ll stick around a while longer.)

Everything fell into place around Leonard. Kyle Lowry was miscast as a go-to player, but he was always a great right-hand man. Pascal Siakam, who averaged 20 points on 51 percent shooting in the Finals, picked the perfect year for a Most Improved Player campaign. Adding Marc Gasol at the deadline was a stroke of genius, as he gave them flexibility on both ends of the floor. Serge Ibaka and Danny Green slotted in as perfect veteran contributors ready to expand and contract their roles as needed. And there was the infusion of youth between Fred VanVleet and Norman Powell who were capable of making a huge impact off the bench. They weren’t a super team — they were just the right team at the right time.

It didn’t look like the makings of a champion at the outset, but they eventually grew into one. They traded dual identities for most of the regular season — it was the Raptors offense versus the Leonard offense — and it wasn’t until midway through the Milwaukee series when they finally married the two. But they stayed competitive throughout because the Raptors reinvented themselves as an elite defensive club, and that carried them through the very end.

There were plenty of challenges along the way, and it came down to a rookie head coach in Nick Nurse to solve them. Philadelphia dwarfed Toronto in sheer length, so Nurse came up with the dual center lineup. Milwaukee stretched the Raptors apart in the first two games before Nurse switched Leonard onto Giannis Antetokounmpo and turned the series into a sweep. Against Golden State, Nurse used middle school tactics to neutralize the greatest shooter in history. And more than anything else, Nurse needed every bit of his midwestern tranquility to keep the Raptors from never getting too high nor getting too low during this emotional title run.

As with any champion, the Raptors caught some breaks along the way. Joel Embiid’s immune system robbed him of his endurance. Mike Budenholzer was too arrogant to change his game plan. Siakam’s calf healed quickly, Leonard’s legs held up, and Lowry’s thumb was manageable. Meanwhile, the Warriors got 12 minutes from Kevin Durant and lost Klay Thompson in two separate fourth quarters. And of course, the rim at Scotiabank Arena was just soft enough to accommodate four bounces on Leonard’s prayer just to even advance past the second round.

Toronto’s path to the podium was winding, but they were deserving winners. The Warriors were shorthanded, but a proud champ would never just surrender the throne. Thompson and Curry were lethal. Draymond Green had a triple-double. Andre Iguodala outscored Leonard, and even DeMarcus Cousins with no legs was scoring clutch baskets. Lowry needed to be sensational in the first half, Siakam had to be steady throughout, VanVleet came up clutch with 12 points in the fourth, and Leonard had to ice it with key free throws in the dying seconds. All in all, it was an instant classic between two excellent teams, and the Raptors were a hair better.

Already, there is burbling chatter of an asterisk. The argument goes that Golden State wasn’t at full strength, therefore this ring wasn’t fully earned. But none of that will matter to the organization, nor to the citizens of Toronto and all across Canada, because this is beyond everyone’s wildest imaginations. For so long, there was nothing to celebrate with the Raptors, and now they are champions.

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